Wknd Box Office: The Conjuring, RIPD, Girl Most Likely, Red 2

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!

Wknd Box Office: The Conjuring, RIPD, Girl Most Likely, Red 2


By Debbie Schlussel



We are past the midway point of the summer, the season when Hollywood is supposed to dazzle us with big blockbuster hits. And, so far, all I’ve seen is underwhelming. And, this weekend, we’re frustratingly served up more of it. None of the new movies in theaters today is particularly good. I’ll start with the relative “best” first, though I doubt I’d pay ten bucks to see any of these, and other than “The Conjuring,” I’d probably quit watching by the middle of these movies if I Netflixed them. (I did not see “Turbo.”)


* “The Conjuring“: This horror/thriller is somewhat scary and suspenseful. It’s also “based on a true story” and focuses somewhat on the real-life couple who are connected to the Catholic Church, perform exorcisms, and were involved in investigating the Amityville Horror home.



Ed and Lorraine Warren (in this movie, they are played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) exist in real life. Ed is the only non-priest and non-Vatican official recognized by the Church to do exorcisms. This movie explores his and Mrs. Warren’s 1971 investigation into a farmhouse that is possessed by Demons. Ron Livingston plays a trucker and father of five daughters. He and his wife (Lili Taylor) move into the dumpy, dirty, old farmhouse and, soon, strange things happen. Their dog won’t go inside, and something very disturbing happens to the dog. Then things are moved, clocks operate weirdly, people go missing and/or possessed, and so on. The Warrens are brought in to get rid of the horror and explore the home’s tragic past.




This was definitely entertaining, and while it is a pretty formulaic horror thriller, there were moments of surprise and suspense throughout. It wasn’t the greatest scary movie I’ve seen, but it wasn’t the worst. It wasn’t bad. My favorite thing about this movie is the accurate period costumes, haircuts, accoutrements, and cars. The movie got those spot on, and that shines through in its dull, dark sepia tones. There’s nothing objectionable about this movie. And, all things considered, I liked it better than this weekend’s other choices.



Since I respect religion and resent Hollywood’s frequent attacks on it (other than Islam, which is never attacked and is in fact promoted and gushed over), I liked how this movie showed religious Catholics and people of faith in a positive light. They helped save this family from evil. You’ll rarely see that coming out of Tinseltown.



ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS


* “R.I.P.D.“: This movie had an interesting premise, but it’s just awful in execution. And incredibly stupid, to boot. Just a mess. Ryan Reynolds is a Boston cop who is partnered with the corrupt Kevin Bacon. They took gold from drug dealers they busted, when they should have booked it into evidence. When Reynolds tells Bacon he has second thoughts about that, Bacon kills Reynolds in another bust.



Upon death, Reynolds gets sent to the R.I.P.D.–the Rest In Peace Department–a mid-way point for somewhat corrupt cops killed in the line of duty who are given an offer of working 100 years to track down “Dead-os” in the modern day world. Yes, the writers of this movie were soooo damned creative that “Dead-os” is the only name they could come up with for weird demon-like criminals seeking to create a tunnel back from R.I.P.D. jail to modern-day earth to create havoc.



Reynolds is partnered up with Jeff Bridges, who is a Civil War-era marshal, and they are sent back to Boston to investigate and find Dead-os and discover that Bacon is involved with them. On earth, no one sees them as the two former cops, and instead, they look like an old Chinese man and a supermodel (Marisa Miller). Their boss at RIPD is Mary-Louise Parker. Oh, and by the way, they save the world. I didn’t care.



The movie isn’t funny, and, yet, it’s supposed to be a comedy. I thought the sci-fi/after-life/law-enforcement combination might make for a good movie. Boy, was I wrong. For a movie that’s only 1.5 hours long, it was a total bore. And the plot was just silly, as was its execution. It’s as if this were written by a sophomoric teen. It looks like a lot of money was spent on special effects for this movie. And for what? Why? I’m amazed they screened this for us. It’s that bad. There’s nothing politically objectionable here. It’s just that the movie’s incredibly dumb and pointless (other than the point to fill Ryan Reynolds’ and Jeff Bridges’ bank accounts and get you to subsidize their mansions–no thanks).



Just awful.



TWO MARXES

* “Girl Most Likely“: The first thing you need to know about this Kristen Wiig “comedy” is that it’s not funny. I laughed like five times at the most. And that was forced laughter. It’s not nearly as funny as her other stuff. Not even close. Mostly, it’s painful. And it has the usual Hollywood memes of class warfare (“rich people are BAD!”) and fathers as creeps who abandon their kids (“men are SCUMBAGS! Yay, slutty feminists!”). Um, no thanks.



In this mildly entertaining, extremely forgettable movie, Wiig plays an aspiring playwright who was once “the next big thing” in the New York theater scene. She won a fellowship to write a play, but instead spent the money shopping with friends and became a big failure. She fakes a suicide attempt to get her boyfriend to propose, and is instead abandoned by the rich crowd of friends who used her talents to advance themselves.



Wiig gets sent to the custody of her estranged, tacky, low-class, working-class mother, Annette Bening, who lives on the Jersey Shore and has a much younger, weird, secret agent boyfriend, who goes by the name “George Bousche” (Matt Dillon). Hmmm . . . when will a movie have a secret agent character who goes by the name “Barack Okaka?” Probably never.



Wiig hates being back in Jersey and hates having to stay with her tacky mother, crazy brother (who has an obsession with crabs–the animal, not the STD), her mother’s tenant (who has taken over Wiig’s childhood bedroom), and the questionable, alleged CIA agent. She develops a romance with the tenant, a Yale grad who works in an Atlantic City casino as a Backstreet Boys impersonator. Wearing her old ’80s clothes that are left at the house, Wiig tries to get her life back, and soon discovers that her father–whom her mother had said was dead–is alive. He’s written several books and is an expert on “the myth of Thanksgiving”–tripe that Hollywood believes in, too (that Thanksgiving is a myth, that America is bad, etc.) When she goes to meet her father, he’s stereotypically Jewish-looking (and played by Jewish and stereotypically Jewish-looking nebbish actor Bob Balaban), incredibly rich, incredibly snobby and class-ist, and a complete scumbag, and she realizes that her tacky mother is the good parent. OY.



The movie is formulaic and predictable. And incredibly pointless.



TWO MARXES PLUS TWO OBAMAS


* “RED 2“: “: I liked the first RED (read my review), but this was just a mess, with a cockamamie, confusing plot. And incredibly silly. Yes, it’s full of action and spy moves, but is that really believable when the actors are all senior citizens (or close enough to it)? Nope.



The story: the semi-retired secret agents–Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, and Helen Mirren–are brought back together, when the CIA and the Pentagon have put a hit out on Willis. Why? They never really explain, except that it has something to do with an operation he once worked on in which rogue nuclear weapons found their way into Russia. The agents work to free the designer of the nukes, Anthony Hopkins, because they believe it will help them, but soon, they see that he’s crazy like a fox and wants his nukes set off in the world, which will obviously kill a lot of people. So their mission–while Willis is evading being killed by a hitman/former CIA agent hired by the U.S. government–is to stop the nukes from being set off on earth.



Lots of chases, lots of action, lots of stupidity, and a giant waste of time, even if there is some mild entertainment to it. Adding Catherine Zeta-Jones to the mix doesn’t add much to the movie, other than more silliness and stupidity. Mary-Louise Parker also stars. Who cares?



ONE MARX

Wknd Box Office: G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The Host, Tyler Perry’s Temptation

Here is an interesting article from http://www.debbieschlussel.com/ reviewing some of the movies that came out over the past weekend. This follows this post about some of the movies from last week and THIS POST about some movies that have been released over the past few years that you might have missed! This all follows this post about guidelines to chosing good movies to watch yourself!


Wknd Box Office: G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The Host, Tyler Perry’s Temptation


By Debbie Schlussel



Can’t say much for any of the Easter/Passover Weekend selections debuting at movie theaters today. I didn’t really like any of these, and I was somewhat charitable in my ratings. I wouldn’t spend $10 on any of ‘em.



* “G.I. Joe: Retaliation“: Some readers have accused me of giving favorable or more favorable reviews to movies for which the studios give me cool stuff a/k/a “swag.” But, while the studio sent me a really cool mask (a “G.I. Joe Special Ops Mask”) to promote this movie, I still didn’t think this was a great movie. It had a ridiculous, hard-to-follow story, and almost no plot to speak of. It makes the first G.I. Joe movie–read my review–(which wasn’t screened for critics–this was, surprisingly) look like a masterpiece.



While this movie is filled with action, cool stunts, and lots of fighting and chases (including a cool chase using ropes and harnesses high in the mountains of Asia), it was confusing and non-sensical at times, and just absurd at others. The story, from what I could piece together is this: the President of the United States has been kidnapped and replaced by an evil villain who has morphed into the President’s image (could be the real life Barack Obama story). He sets up the G.I. Joes to look like villains and assassins and has them killed off . . . or so he thinks. But a few survive (including Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). If you are watching this movie for Channing Tatum (as some women probably are), you’ll be disappointed, as he is killed off in the first five minutes. The G.I. Joes who survive return to foil the fake President and stop his plot of mutually assured destruction of the world in a mad nuclear plot.



I didn’t get how or why, Storm Shadow, a villain the Joes don’t trust or who is normally against them, is now on their side and does martial arts to help them win–and there are scenes with him and some other Asian martial artist and their respective gurus in which I couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on. But this isn’t a movie of “gettting” anything.



Weaved into the plot, Hollywood plays politics, with the surviving female G.I. Joe (Adrianne Palicki) whining about how her father didn’t want her to serve in the military because he said a woman couldn’t protect the country. She joined anyway and spent her life trying to outrank her father so he’d have to salute her (talk about bitter), but he died before she could achieve that goal. At the end of the movie, her twisted goal is “achieved,” when an original G.I. Joe, Bruce Willis, tells her that he served with her father and he would be proud of her. Strange that this movie comes out just after the Obama administration shoves women in combat down our throats. Now, the movies are shoving it down our throats, too.



Like I said, the mask they sent me was very cool. Sadly, the movie, not so much. There’s nothing objectionable about it, other than the women in combat BS. It’s just a silly flick and a waste of time. I originally gave this movie HALF A REAGAN, changed it to A WASH (ZERO REAGANS OR MARXES), and now, on third thought, I’m changing it back.



HALF A REAGAN




* “The Host“: As science fiction movies go, this was one of the more ridiculous and uninteresting. But that doesn’t matter because it’s based on a novel written by Stephenie Rumpeltstiltskin Meyer, the “Twilight” author who turns utter dung into publishing and box office gold. I found this movie long, slow, and boring, and I struggled to stay awake. Much of it either doesn’t make sense, and there are giant plot holes. Still, young women and teens who read Meyer’s stuff and go in droves to see movies based on them will make this the biggest movie of the holiday weekend. I missed the critics screening of this and tried to see it last night when it debuted, but it was sold out, even at the movie theater in my very “hood” neighborhood (I saw it this morning, so I could review it for you).



The story: the earth has been invaded by aliens (who are mad at us humans for “destroying each other and the planet”–please Stephenie Meyer, come up with something other than the usual Hollywood meme about us destroying the planet; yaaaaawn). The aliens are tiny spindly things that look like the koosh balls I used to throw against my wall. They are inserted into the necks of the bodies of dead humans they are fighting to overtake. Then, those bodies come back to life as “hosts” of the aliens. But some of the host bodies still have the minds and memories of the humans who once occupied them, and they are at war with the aliens being hosted.



One of the host bodies is that of Melanie (Saoirse Ronan), a dead human rebel who has been fighting against the aliens. The alien who occupies her body is called “Wanderer” or “Wanda” for short. As the other aliens (“Seekers”) try to get her to find memories within her host so they can find out where the other remaining rebels are hiding, Wanda is fighting off Melanie’s inner thoughts of resisting the interrogation efforts. But, eventually, Melanie wins out and gets Wanda to escape from the Seekers to locate and rejoin her fellow rebels. Melanie was in love with one of the rebels, but Wanda is in love with a different rebel, and there is a fight within/between the host and the alien over that.



Things that don’t make sense: Melanie doesn’t want Wanda to tell the rebels that Melanie is still living within her body, despite the fact that the rebels want to kill the host because they believe only the alien is living within the body. Also, Melanie doesn’t want Wanda to kiss the rebel Melanie loves even though Melanie still loves him. Confused? So was I? But I just didn’t care enough to need this or anything else clarified. Also, non-sensical: why all the hosts occupied by aliens look like supermodels, wear post-modernist white suits, and drive in silver, ultra-modern Buicks and fly silver helicopters. The movie seemed like European Vogue models versus shabby Americans.



There’s no new ground in this movie. It’s not a good science fiction thriller, not even close. There was no suspense, and nothing keeping you sitting through this, except a lot of caffeine. A dull movie with lots of window dressing, nearly zero substance.



ZERO REAGANS OR MARXES – A WASH



* “Tyler Perry’s Temptation“: This wasn’t screened for critics, but I went to see it on my own, since it’s the most heavily marketed Tyler Perry movie I can remember. I hate reviewing a movie that has the director’s name pompously placed at the beginning of the title. That said, this is better than any other Tyler Perry movie I’ve seen, though all things are relative because every Tyler Perry movie I’ve seen is absolutely horrid and this isn’t that great. And in every single one, the men are all cretins, creeps, and thugs. In this one, though, there is a good message and a good man, a husband who is dumped for a bad guy. Add to that, however, that this movie features Kim Kardashian (who cannot act, except when playing herself in porn videos) in a minor role. And she is as annoying as ever. Yuck.



The story: a small town Southern girl and her sweetheart from childhood get married and move to Washington, D.C. The the wife works for a matchmaking service for rich men as the company’s in-house therapist. At that company, she meets an internet billionaire who aggressively courts and teases her, even though he knows she is married. But, soon, she gives in to temptation and limitless ambition and dumps her terrific, hard-working, devoted husband for the glamorous life with the billionaire. But it’s a mistake that ruins the rest of her life.



As I noted, the message is good, but the movie is like a glorified Lifetime Channel movie of the week. Nothing new here, except Vanessa Williams’ really awful French accent. And the movie is depressing.



ZERO REAGANS OR MARXES – A WASH